Rostovtzeff gets a bad rap these days for "reading in" too much to ancient history, to imposing on (especially) Roman history the framework of his own experience in Russia. Sure, it may be true to some extent. But to conclude, as Wikipedia does as of this writing, that "Rostovtzeff's theories in this area continue to be rejected by scholars as untenable" is both unfortunate and annoying. Who are these anonymous, supposedly somewhat objective contributors to reduce the writings of such a genius to (again, as of this writing) two measly paragraphs of coverage, only to end in that manner? Truth is, despite whatever biases his perspective may involve, there is no ancient historian I would rather read than M. Rostovtzeff, and I have read many. And here's why: you get a real sense that there's actually someone, an individual, behind the page, with enough experience thinking about these things to have the guts to come up with connections he may not have thought of before in the process of his writing his chapters, which is a welcome antidote, frankly, to much Anglo-American ancient history which--unless tackling a monograph-sized subject that artificially imposes some degree of idiosyncrasy in one's writing--tends to play it too safe, to read as though they were afraid to reveal who they were as individual thinkers behind the convenient facade of Academia, with a reputation for "objectivity" to uphold.I read Rostovtzeff to follow the paths he leads me down in a usually unpredictable manner, rather than to gather information about ancient Rome (or Greece: his companion volume _Greece_ is also worth reading, but less brilliant, I think, than _Rome_) for its own sake. And yet here's the paradox, and it's what makes me love him most as a writer: it's because he dares to go beyond his comfort zone so often that he ends up looking at aspects of the ancient world that others hardly touch, for example, certain practices by the people of various Roman provinces that slip through the cracks of what usually passes as history yet which--along with other such insights--sheds more light on what was really going on than the more traditional, statistics-driven analyses given more respect by the anonymous contributors of Wikipedia and the public at large.Bottom line: M. Rostovtzeff is a historian, yes, but above all he is a writer, someone who dares to look at the ancient Greeks and Romans through his own prism, yes, which sometimes leads him into certain kinds of bias, yes, but this is always true anyway: it's just that in the process Rostovtzeff is so much more interesting than most of the others. Treat yourself to this author whose books have withstood the test of time and Wikipedia dismissal for very good reason.